Genesis
by Thirsty19
Summary: "Shadow and dust. Fear and weeping and rage. The pervasive scent of smoldering flesh. The heat from the funeral pyre as it swept away the shame of my tears…This is what I knew of death…Until him." Not slash.


Author's Note: Hello beautiful people! This is my humble attempt at the beginning days, months, years of Godric and Eric, and aims to show the progression of their complex relationship. This little snippet is also all I have written for the time being, but no doubt, more will be coming with Christmas and much needed time off work around the corner:) Enjoy!

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 **Prologue - AD 930**

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When I awoke, he had told me plainly that it was over.

" _Nothing will ever be the same as it was, Eric. You can never go back to who you were…"_

He told me to embrace what I had become.

"And what is that?" I asked in turn, looking down my nose at the still, pale child before me. "What exactly have I become? A god? A demon?"

I remember that he smirked—the arrogance in my tone a hearty chuckle vibrating across our fledgling bond to tickle the corners of his mouth…Yet, in the years to come, he would tell me what terror had engulfed him at my question. What fear in thinking that I would despise him for what he had done…And I pause. I tremble in whatever is left of my soul at what love he had for me, even then, mere hours into our eternity together. And I realize the grin was forced.

His gaze in that moment was deep. Penetrating. His answer simple:

"You have become better."

Before I could reply, a kind of smudge spread through the air around him, a blur of motion that dissipated as soon as it had begun, and suddenly there was another figure. One stout and long. Solid. Fully outfitted for battle. Indeed, a warrior—the very one who had, only two nights prior, nearly ended me.

He was shaking, his eyes wild and frantic against the darkness.

I reached for my sword.

"No doubt you remember this one," Death began.

My eyes narrowed in response. My hand sought further along my belt for that unmistakable scabbard.

Death pulled my murderer against his chest, leaned up to speak into the quivering soldier's ear: "If you kill him, human, I will grant you your life."

 _...What you love most…_

The soldier rushed at me with his blade extended, the polished steel tip glinting against a silver moonlight...and in the same instant, I realized that I had been stripped of padding and shield, belt and arm bracers, chainmail and sword.

"Control your emotions, Eric."

 _He_ had retreated to the outer ring. Sank away into the still pool of peerless darkness beyond the reach of humble moonlight…I had not the presence of mind then to notice—It was all so new, so thrillingly fresh, after all—that, despite the pitch of that night, I could still see him.

The sole witness to the spectacle breaking from within.

I watched his eyes narrow.

"Focus."

Blurring around my enemy with a speed that was almost disorienting, I dodged the attack. But a warrior in defense of his life was rarely disoriented. He pursued my movement undeterred, lifting his sword high in preparation for what, no doubt, would have been a crushing blow had I been human.

Only I wasn't.

When the right side of his ribcage shattered against my elbow, the sword falling soundlessly to the forest floor, I blinked. I noticed, perhaps for the first time, that I wasn't breathing. That I could no longer hear the rush of a quickened heartbeat against my eardrums or feel the heat of exertion within my veins.

The dying warrior fell to his knees, blood escaping from either side of his mouth in swollen rivers.

It was nothing I hadn't seen a thousand times before, but…something foreign had stirred within me.

"Breathe it in, my son," Death encouraged.

The words seemed to slip silk-like across my subconscious, prodding with tender fingertips at the noxious fire coursing through me. And surrender beckoned as I had never known it…sweet and tempting. Indeed and in honor of what would become unwavering trust, my lungs seemed to inflate of their own accord.

With all the innocence of a child, I prepared for the familiar caress of briny, sea air against my nostrils…

It was not to be.

The heady, asphyxiating scent of the human's blood enveloped me, swirled about my conscious and subconscious, delved greedily into the pores of my skin, saturating bone. My fangs erupted without warning, even as I clamped my palm about my nose and stumbled a half-step backward in defiance.

"Wha…What have…What have you…" I tried to articulate my confusion, my disgust with that still figure opposite, but every word brought the sharp aroma only deeper into the dark crevices of my throat. And there it festered. It seethed. It demanded satisfaction.

Death glared upon the scene. Impatient then as I have never known him to be since.

"There is no right or wrong, Eric. Only survival or death. And now that I have you, I will not allow you to refuse." The child's voice was harsh, cracking like a whip against the bared flesh of my reservations. "Bite him."

"I am a king!" I protested hoarsely, indignant even in the face of Undeniable Thirst. "Who are you to command me?"

That rare smirk of his made a second and final appearance. Feigned amusement.

"As your maker, I command you. Bite him."

The surrender came then like an iron fist, like the Thirst itself to demand—no—claim my obedience. There was no resistance, no hesitation to my compliance…for I was afforded none.

To the chorus of my Maker's approval, I lost myself in the sanguine-red of the warrior's throat.

And to my utter surprise, it was glorious.


End file.
